


black sand

by mortalitasi



Series: an indictment of mind [1]
Category: Tyranny (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Eventual Romance, F/M, Gen, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Non-Explicit Sex, also yeah my fatebinder's a bit of a murderer so. . . be warned., in this house we write Vague Smut™, this is technically an interspecies romance before she becomes archon come to think of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-23 19:13:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16165163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mortalitasi/pseuds/mortalitasi
Summary: Tunon has always been one for expeditious solutions. Sending Fatebinder Charis into Vendrien's Well has two purposes: the fulfillment of the Edict, and the severance of his illogical, illicit attachment to her. It is efficient, and it is perfect.And, like all plans involving her, it fails.





	1. distance

**Author's Note:**

> [mumbles] look, smoke man is hot and you're lucky this is in chronological order because originally the smut was the third chapter lol

She’s a strange creature, his Charis.  
  
He’d known she had come to Court today, of course—he knows _everything_ about anything that occurs in this place, the throne of his power—but he hadn’t seen her all day. He had moved through the grit of every-day work, irritated with himself for anticipating her visit; because, like rain or sleet, or perhaps an Edict, Charis is bound to her own rules, her own cycle, and he knew she would appear before him ere the day was truly done.  
  
She slips in well after night has fallen upon the Bastard City, well after he’s resigned himself to quiet contemplation in his quarters. His refuge is a roost isolated high above the din and cacophony of the Court proper. He has no idea why the place is furnished with a bed (he does not sleep), or why there is a perpetual, low fire powered by magic burning in the hearth (he is unaffected by heat or lack of it); he usually ends up in the sprawling armchair facing the fireplace, legs loosely crossed at the ankle, thinking long into the dark hours, only rising when dawn breaks over the city once more.  
  
That’s how she finds him—still, so very statuelike that she might have mistaken him for a sculpture, save for the fluttering undulations of black smoke around the chair. She locks the door behind her, as always, and he watches her approach with growing interest. Very little looks different since he saw her last: the silky hair is a bit longer, her stride somewhat wider, but the proud visage is still the same, framed by angled brows.  
  
Beauty has no value in the halls of law. Beauty simply _is_ , the way the sky is blue or blood is red—it’s more of a motive than a pleasure in Tunon’s line of work, long since having lost any of its initial allure. Beauty can drive men and women to kill and defile, to pillage and torture— _if I cannot have this, no one shall!_ She would matter to these kinds of people, with her pleasing face and her sigil-marked hands, willowy and delicate, and perhaps they would seek to possess her, as well. He is not one of them. He is the Eyeless Justice, the voice of Kyros’ code—but she matters to _him_ , too, somehow, as though he is equipped to appreciate her in the simplest of regards. In all, a paradox.  
  
Tonight she wears an uncomplicated black shift, and her feet fall bare against the marble of the floor. She comes to a stop just an arm’s length away from the chair, and they look upon one another. The locked hand he’s kept pressed to the side of his mask breaks from its position and reaches out to her, palm-up. An offer.  
  
“No armor, Your Honor?” she says quietly, fingers brushing feather-light at his knuckles. “Were you expecting guests?”  
  
He turns his hand, catching her wrist. “Just the one,” he answers, and pulls.  
  
She comes willingly, settling on his lap and twining her legs over his. He can feel the heat of her through the thin fabric of his open tunic. She’s warmer than she looks, quite the contrast to his own body, a vessel that’s been breaking in bits and pieces for centuries: the unending unlife of an Archon takes a toll on any mortal coil, bending flesh and blood to its purpose. He has not entirely lost his general shape, like Nerat, or given away parts of his mind for power, like so many others, but the passage of time and enchantment has inured him to things most others would need—food, water, rest… pleasure. He had entirely forgotten its diverting joys until Charis took it upon herself to remind him.  
  
In those early days, he’d rebuffed her without second thought, knowing that even rejection would not shake her devotion. The girl she had been then would have razed a city to the ground at his word, for his approval. The woman she is today would do worse.  
  
He cards his fingers through a section of her hair, noting with satisfaction that her eyes slide shut at his attentions. With Charis, every action has a reaction. His Fatebinder, so methodical and motionless, seethes to life at his touch. It’s rather thrilling in a way nothing else is. He often interacts with the world through the buffer provided to him by his armor, his gauntlets, his gloves, his masks—but these shadowed moments they share here, far from Court, they’re all experienced with the immediacy of bare skin, rare and raw.  
  
“Have I been selected for Proclamation once again?” she asks, watching him through a fringe of thick lashes.  
  
“You performed your duties adequately the previous time,” he tells her, letting his other hand fall to her hip. She has nothing on under the shift—he could tell the minute she stepped into the room.  
  
She makes a sound of amusement. “They named me _Stormcaller_ for the last time _._ ” She leans in, pressing her lips to the exposed patch of grey skin near the jaw of his mask. He has no heartbeat, not in the layman’s sense of the word—she can only feel the continuous hum of the magic that sustains him. “What title will I be given next? They may think you have a new favorite.”  
  
His thumb digs into her hip, and the smoke curling at the feet of the chair gutters, like a stoked flame. “You were chosen based on merit. Nothing more.”  
  
She tuts, gently teasing his throat with her teeth, listening to the _whoosh_ of his breath behind the implacable mask. “ _Nothing_ more?”  
  
“No,” he says, but his voice has gained a husky edge.  
  
She reaches up, curling her fingers under the mask, pausing—asking for permission—pulling up when he does nothing to stop her. The iron softens, peeling from what remains of his face like a sticky film when she tugs, and he wonders what she sees: there are no mirrors in his rooms, or even in the Court at large, symbols of vanity as they are, and so he hasn’t looked upon his own reflection in years. Does he even appear human anymore? Doubtful. He remembers sparse details of what it was like before, of course—a stern countenance, a strong jaw, dark hair, almost as long as hers—he remains, in the least, shaped as a man, though the undulating, inhuman smog of his magic follows him everywhere, a sentient cloak. It bleeds from his skin, blackening his veins.  
  
The mask dissolves as she tosses it away, disappearing into threads of dust, waiting until he has need of it again. He cannot see her as clearly without its arcane aid, though he can still make out her features through the milky film that has clouds his sight. To relinquish any of the masks or his armor is to be vulnerable, shucked from his shell, but he won’t deny either of them the indulgence of their absence.  
  
She cups his face in her hands, reverent, her ebony eyes gleaming. Shadows stream between her fingers. Whatever it is she _does_ see, it does not bother her. “My lord,” she breathes, somehow overcome. “I’ve dreamed of this…”  
  
“My name, Charisamene,” he says, and she shivers at the sound of him addressing her like that—like a lover. “Call me by my name.”  
  
She leans in first, kissing him, and the scent of her overwhelms him—cold incense and styrax, linen and ink. It will linger on him, clinging to his senses for the rest of the day, and he will not mind. He curls an arm around her slight waist, pressing her closer, slotting them together. She is pliant, so eager, opening her mouth to his, letting him taste the ghost of fruit wine on her tongue (fig, her favorite), moving her hands from his jaw to his neck; for all her monochrome, she is like a fire up this close, hungry and all-consuming, far from the order he prizes.  
  
“Tunon,” she says—gasps—when they part for breath. Her lips are suffused with color, pink and bitten. “Tunon. _Tunon.”_  
  
“Yes,” he murmurs. “Just so.”  
  
She shudders again, cheeks flushing, making a trill of heat unfurl in his gut. He learned early on that she responds well to his voice, to words of approbation or instructions—he is a quick study, educated and observant, and his Charis makes the school of desire a surprisingly compelling subject. He had thought he’d lost every such proclivity—and ability—centuries ago, before he met her. He is not overly regretful about being wrong. At the least, they do not have to worry about unwanted issue. The acid existence of living as the Archon of Justice has scalded away fertility and feeling of every sort, like parchment being devoured by flame.  
  
Perhaps that’s why Charis is intoxicating—she inspires sensation, cutting through the numbness. Maybe he stopped being human that day, long ago, when he put on his first crude mask, the face of cedarwood that he thinks he can sometimes still smell. Maybe he was born the way he is—singleminded, _apart_ , bent on one true justice, one true peace. Maybe he is all that and more, but also just Tunon.  
  
She grasps at what passes for hair on him, gauzy strings of what once might have been a healthy mane of black, but are now some unknowable material, changed like the rest of him: it just floats about his skull, a strange halo, usually tamped down and in by the headdress he secures over his mask. His Fatebinder, so mortal and lovely, does not care. She runs the points of her dark nails over his scalp anyway, leaning in to push her forehead to his. Her minty breath brushes at his mouth.  
  
“What would please you best, my lord?” she whispers, the pupils of her eyes blown wide with need. Always so eager—it made fostering a competitive environment among the other Fatebinders her age even easier than usual. She is a jealous one, cautious, but _loyal._ Oh, yes. Very, very loyal.  
  
He coasts a hand over the side of her face, brushing pointed knuckles against her cheek. “You,” is all he says, and the admission makes her come closer, until he only has to crane his head downward to skim the sweep of her collarbone with his mouth.  
  
She lets him do as he likes, resting her elbows on his shoulders and allowing her arms to hang free. He drinks in every sigh and gasp, every flutter of her pulse at the hollow of her throat; she doesn’t stop him when he parts the shift with his free hand, turning his attentions to places lower than her clavicle. He plucks and teases and laves until she’s quivering in his embrace, trying vainly to press her thighs together, which is quite impossible given their current position. All it does is slide them together, feeding into the need for more friction. He seals his mouth over hers again just as one of her hands winds down between them, loosening the laces of his trousers.  
  
Even in his arousal, he is lukewarm compared to her, to any living thing, and the heat of her palm grasping at him makes him break away and hiss through his teeth. He has to clamp a hand over the arm of the chair when she strokes downward, her thumb traveling in maddening circles.  
  
“ _Charis_ —”  
  
“I don’t want to wait,” she says, and he cannot help but agreeing.  
  
He moves his bruising grip to her waist, helping to lift her for a single torturous moment; and then she is descending, enveloping him, her relief escaping in a heady moan that sets his nerves alight. She is a wonder, lit from behind by the orange haze of the fire, her fine hair tumbled over her shoulders and back, the open shift baring to him the expanse of her pale skin. The evidence of his earlier attentions linger at her small breasts and neck, red and purple, and he reaches out to push the shift off—she unintentionally stops him when she moves, seating him deeper inside her, and the blinding sear of _yearning_ paralyzes him.  
  
She is pressing kisses to his cheek, his jaw, his temple, stopping at his mouth, curling her fingers at his nape when his hips hitch up. Again, a moan, and again, every fiber in him turns to iron. He is straining against her, drowning in her, and he wants _more_.  
  
Charis catches his chin, looking at him, looking into and _through_ him, something vicious and voracious in her eyes. “I am yours,” she says, so aggressive with an admission that would have been, by any other means, sweet.  
  
She is unique, his Fatebinder. A soul he’s never met before. He rewards her with another thrust, longer, slower, and her head almost lolls back completely at the feeling of it. She is prisoner to this exquisite pressure as well. Her body tells him so. She clutches at him, wholly at the mercy of what he inspires in her, repeating his name like it’s a prayer, like it’s the only word she knows. She draws a ragged exhale and shudders when he fists a hand in her hair, drawing her head back once more to reveal her throat, and then lets go of a wavering sigh when he cups her nape, soothing the hurt. Her nails dig into his chest, a pain that oscillates between sharp and dull as he moves within her. He would accept anything from her, just so long as she keeps up her answering rhythm, meeting him halfway, the burn of her devouring him.  
  
He drives her to her peak mercilessly, and holds her while she loses herself to the whiteout of pleasure; she shakes in his embrace, gleaming with perspiration, the shift now rumpled and bunched around her waist. Beautiful. Tall spirals of smoke lick at her arms and face, slither beneath the chair, grown high and fierce in his ardor. She is silent and pliant while he chases his own fulfillment, offering just a kiss on the vein in his neck as he spills himself inside her. It would be easy, to forget what he is, to think he is a being as mundane and harmless as a man, when she treats him so.  
  
He breathes her name into her hair, chasing some unknown pattern across her back with his fingers.  
  
She doesn’t say anything. Just stares back, languid and lurid.  
  
This is the closest he ever comes to seeing her content. He aches because of it, because he wishes for everything else she can give him, in every capacity—every expression, every thought, every possibility. The tumultuous rush of _feeling_ hits him with the force of a siege weapon, a secondary climax in itself. He can divorce himself from everything with the clinical effortlessness of someone who hasn’t been mortal in centuries—but once he allows himself a taste, treads that path, it is difficult to stop himself from overindulging. He has never been one for half-measures, in any sense.  
  
He takes her twice more, once where they’d started, and once on the immaculate bed that is never touched unless she is in Court. She actually smiles when he moves them, and it cuts back the shadow and the years on her, reminds him how truly, terrifyingly young she is—and he only ever has the capacity for _terror_ when she is involved, when there are teeth and tongues and lips, and it is immediate and intimate, everything an Archon leaves behind. Everything the law is unconcerned with.  
  
_Justice is blind, with no shape or name; it is sexless, boundless, and it is everywhere._  
  
He had said this to—snapped it at, rather—her, years ago, when she had asked too many questions and the sting of her curiosity had stirred his ire: Calio is his _curious_ one, the dissident voice in the dark, the insistent question. _Curious_ Fatebinders die quickly and horribly, to their peers and rivals, to Bleden Mark, to him, and her disregard for the boundaries and categories had irritated him. He had handpicked her, plucked her from the squalling mess of the war mage barracks with consummate care—she was intelligent and alert, determined and savage, with a mind for details and a hatred for loose ends. Her potential had been clear, infinite, and unrefined, like an uncut gem. And there she’d been, working against herself, endangering her progress, by being _curious._  
  
Perhaps it had been then that he had first realized he wasn’t as indifferent to disposing of her as he’d liked. But he had considered it the exasperation of a craftsmaster, loath to part with what was quickly becoming one of his most useful tools.  
  
He looks at her beside him, sleeping soundly under the coverlet, the curves and dips of her obvious under the fabric. She’d been boneless with delight while they wiped each other clean with washcloths, and she had finally drifted off moments later, despite her stubborn insistence to stay awake—she did not want to waste the time she had, she said. She would be apart from him soon enough, she said. And he believed her, and let her slumber anyhow. He thumbs at her lips, strokes at her forehead. She sighs at the touch, turning his mind molten. He is sending her to her death in Vendrien’s Well, and it stings worse than he’d thought it would.  
  
A tool? What a fool he had been.


	2. arrival

The Fatebinder strikes like an asp.  
  
Lean muscle and wiry strength hide under her cleanly-cut robes of black; she moves with liquid grace, the efficiency of her style sharpened by years of study and trial. Verse has seen several war mages in action before, but nothing like this, nothing like _her._  
  
When it all comes to a stop, and they stand still, surrounded by the charred and broken bodies of the Vendrien Guard, the Fatebinder faces her, turning slowly, and Verse is reminded of wheels rotating on an axel. She’s not a tall woman, but her presence is palpable, suffocating. Long sections of bone-white hair, straight as a pin, spill out from under her hood, tumble over her shoulders and arms, hanging by her elbows; she’s a pallid thing, unused to light, but Verse knows instinctively it would be a mistake to underestimate this one. She’s a good judge of character, attuned to the slightest flickers of cruelty; yet she gazes into the Fatebinder’s eyes, black and featureless, like obsidian, and feels absolutely... nothing. Only a void stares back, patient and eternal.  
  
“A Fury. How fortunate,” the Fatebinder says, softly, and her velvet voice rushes over Verse like a wash of freezing water. Even in the heat of the Well, she feels a chill grip the back of her neck—not fear, _never_ fear—but _awareness_. “I carry the Will of Our Lord Kyros into the valley. Walk with me.”  
  
It’s not a suggestion. Verse shrugs. “Hell of a coincidence, running into you out here.”  
  
The Fatebinder’s pale mouth curls into a small, sharp, _sharp_ smile. “Coincidence? No, Verse—the universe is rarely so very lazy.”  
  
Ice, creeping through her jugular. She never gave the Fatebinder her name.


	3. barter

Charis is standing in the center of an emerald lake, its surface rippling under her bare feet.  
  
The water surrounds her, going on for as far as the eye can see in every direction, flat and placid, stretching out under a sickly and dim, cloudless sky. Every inhale is heavy, a knot of humidity; it smells like moss that’s soaked overlong in still waters, damp wood, the stagnant perfume of an undisturbed swamp. She knows she is in the floating space she goes to when she sleeps, but this time it has been shaped by a foreign hand. She knows, also, that there is someone behind her, can feel the smothering pall of their magic clinging to her back, squeezing around her torso. She turns to face them—though she has a good idea of who would be obsessive enough to invade her dreams across Vendrien’s Well, twisting the sigils for Travel and Sleep into a gnarled mess.  
  
He’s not much taller than her, with a boyish face framed by dark curls and a dimpled, toothy smile. He’s dressed in a sort of stained, patchwork finery, something that might have once been the garb of a noble house, now marred and torn and darned beyond recognition. His countenance is not familiar, not at first, but he looks a Northerner, perhaps a lowlander, with his bronze skin and sharp nose.  
  
She says nothing yet, taking her time to look at him. He seems content to look straight back, his smile never shifting. There are bright, solid points of green in the pupils of his brown eyes, as though he’s staring directly into a brazier of jade flame.  
  
He watches her watch him, motionless, enjoying the attention. She speaks first, of course, because the one who begins the conversation intelligently is the one in control, as Tunon taught, and she has never had any shortage of _words_.  
  
“May I be of assistance?” she asks, her question echoing out across the water around them.  
  
“ _Fatebinder_ ,” he says, bowing mockingly with a flourish. It’s a voice she’s heard before, but always beneath the resonance of thousands of other timbres, crammed into an ugly, many-faced helmet. “We were wondering if you’d lost your tongue.”  
  
“No,” she replies. She hasn’t lost it—she simply likes to dip it into her brain before she speaks, unlike a good many in her acquaintance.  
  
“We are glad to hear it,” he continues, straightening his back. “Tongues are such _useful_ little flesh flaps, you know—we would hate for you to misplace yours.”  
  
“It is currently in no danger,” she says, crossing her arms. “Though I predict that may soon change.”  
  
He laughs, euphoric and buoyant, but there’s nothing innocent about it. “Oh, dearest Fatebinder, you say the most _wonderful_ things.”  
  
“To what do I owe the visit?” she says.  
  
The image of him shimmers, like his entire silhouette is caught in the pull of a heatwave, and then he is standing but an arm’s length from her without ever having taken a step. He leers down at her, frozen in his observation. The visage he has chosen to wear would look human, if it were not so still, if the wrong parts of it weren’t over-animated; there is expression aplenty, yes, but no breathing outside of speech, no blinking, no swallowing. He may appear human, at a perfunctory glance, until a moment has passed, and it becomes clear he has forgotten how to _act_ the part. He looms closer, the tip of his nose almost brushing at her forehead. The scent of ash, blood, and hot coal washes over her, a stifling wave. She does not move—doesn’t even uncross her arms.  
  
“Charis…” He elongates the sibilance of her name, sounding like a ridiculous serpent. “We know you remain undecided about the future of Vendrien’s Well. We also know you tend to err on the side of caution, and might need some incentive. Consider this a… proposal.”  
  
What an _entirely unamusing_ choice of word. She bites down on the urge to retaliate. She is not keen on finding out how death, injury, and general maiming, if sustained in dreams, would translate to the corporeal body.  
  
His voice lowers to a honeyed whisper. “Choose the Chorus. We can see the song of scarlet in you, Fatebinder. We could teach you to harness it—to let all that fury go. Let us have you. We could be _sublime_.”  
  
The thought of being added to the menagerie of misery that is the Voices doesn’t strike her as a pleasant pastime. After all, he’s only asking because she could resist him—and she’s not certain that battle would result in definite victory for either of them. He may be mad, all however many of _him_ there are, but a dominant personality does exist: the smiling murderer from so long ago. She’s willing to bet that he is not the kind to relinquish control for no reason, and Charis is not a betting woman. His fervor for overly-intricate torture rituals, his carefully-picked words, the vast net of spies and eyes and monsters—they betray his greed for direction and domination, no matter how chaotic.  
  
He exhales a puff of air, making the strands of hair around her face flutter, tracking their movement with his sleepless eyes. “You are staring,” he says, sounding pleased. “Why?”  
  
“My lord Nerat,” she begins, calmly. “You look different.”  
  
“A most _brilliant_ deduction, Fatebinder. We can see why you went so very far in Tunon’s Court,” he says, and she doubts he himself knows whether he intended the comment to be playful or plainly mocking. He lifts a hand, as though to touch her. “This is the way of dreams. Everyone gets kicked back to the beginning, when we sleep. This was the first mask, a mask that was not a mask, the only one for a while. It was _boring_ , then. So excruciatingly quiet, too.”  
  
The appearance was not a choice? That makes sense. The Voices cling to their showmanship, the gore, the over-the-top reactions and commands and gestures. Why would such a beast show itself as anything but utterly terrifying? It would not. And yet he chose to do so, regardless, because… because what? Perhaps trying to inject either sense or logic into the doings of the Voices is pointless—all it serves to do is frustrate her. She is possessed of just a single mind, unlike him, or it, or them.  
  
His hand instead lands on his own cheek, where he bunches what flesh he can find between two pinching fingers. “We are entirely aware this is considered more _personable_.”  
  
It really isn’t. She would much prefer the green flames and the rotating helm, even the screaming. What is before her somehow seems more dangerous than that inhuman grotesquerie she’s come to expect—maybe it’s because she knows the story, and can keenly imagine this handsome and forgettable man doing everything in his power to live up to the name of Kinflayer. Ever the eager turncoat, he hung the tattered skins of House Nerat across the grounds as welcoming flags for the Archon of War—his first step in a journey that has led him here—and he looked like this while he did it.  
  
She does love her history, just not _so_ up close.  
  
“You are _thinking,”_ he says, grin widening, in the same instant reaching out and flicking at the center of her forehead with his hot fingers. She doesn’t flinch, but her spine grows rigid, her legs tense. He laughs again, and the boisterous echo of it bounces all around them. His eyes fix upon hers, the points of green in his pupils blowing wide. “Ooh, what a glare! Good enough to eat.”  
  
“My lord,” she grits out between clenched teeth, “we have drifted from the original point.”  
  
“Ah, yes,” he says with a sigh, slouching his shoulders in an affectation of boredom. That one manually-expelled, unneeded breath hits her cheeks and lips; the scent of dust and charcoal and burnt hair overwhelms her, testing the formidable limits of her admittedly ironclad stomach. “What say you, Charis? Will you be mine?”  
  
She stares into the spectre’s face. “ _Yours_? Whose?”  
  
“Ours.”  
  
Nerat’s smile really is more of a rictus—the last, involuntary expression of a death mask. It doesn’t fade, despite her standing a little taller, glaring a little harder. “No,” she says, her refusal steady as the earth. She was ripped as a babe from the succors of home and dropped into the tyranny of the war mage barracks. She was broken and remade by Bleden Mark in a year, the sole survivor of her ill-fated class. Tunon _trusts_ her. In what world would she have been cowed or tempted into answering differently? Not this one.  
  
“We are disappointed,” Nerat says, tucking two curling fingers under her chin, tilting it up. He has averagely-sized hands, slender; the perfect tools for someone with a macabre slant on attention to detail. “But we are not surprised. Seldom are, these days. It was worth a try.”  
  
“We both work best on our own… my lord,” she remarks, making his brows hike upward.  
  
“The bickering and the biting is half the fun, little clerk,” he murmurs. “And the arguments… I always win _those.”_  
  
Not every time, evidently. But she doesn’t say as much. The esteemed Voices of Nerat aren’t overly fond of criticism—or disagreement, or suggestions, or anything that could remotely be taken as dissent, for that matter. His inner circle is full of madmen he’s cut and molded to his liking—literally—and in a world where eager killers can be found in every village, he has no reason to _not_ murder anyone he suspects of sedition. Truth be told, you’d have to already be half-mad to think joining the Chorus an improvement upon whatever drudgery your life was before.  
  
“Perhaps some other time,” Charis says. “First, Vendrien’s Well must be retaken.”  
  
Nerat cuckles, baring sharp teeth. “Some other time? Even if we did deign to give you a second chance, you would still refuse. You are too independent for a lawdog, you savage thing. Too independent by half.”  
  
It’s not the first she’s heard of it. Bleden Mark has had plenty to say on the topic—he mostly took to reminding her of the advantages to be found in blind loyalty while she laid on the ground, her own blood puddling around her in the aftermath of his take on a _light_ sparring session. _Can’t be too much of a person under Brother Tunon’s eye, kid,_ he would tell her. _So_ — _are you a person?_  
  
_No,_ she’d croak, even as she thought otherwise. _I am a Fatebinder._  
  
And Mark would nod, saying, _Remember it._  
  
“Then what is to be done?” she says, already  able to guess at the response. But a good Fatebinder always asks—evidence cannot be corroborated in silence.  
  
Nerat’s fingers clamp around her jaw, digging into her skin, the gentle teasing of a moment ago gone; there’s force and spite in its place, and he’s so close that she could count every black lash fringing his unsettling eyes, if she cared to try. “We _will_ meet again,” he promises, dragging one thumb across her cheek. “And when we do, you will spurn us— _again_ —and then… and then, we will see if you are worth everything Tunon has wagered on you. If you are at all as delicious as you look.”  
  
She will mull over the overt threat later, when she wakes; for the moment, she stares back at him, as undisturbed as the lake beneath them. “I look forward to it, my lord.”  
  
The pressure on her jaw alleviates as he dissipates into smoke and tongues of viridian fire, leaving her alone with the sound of his fading laugh.


	4. terms

The outpost smells like shit and offal. So much for _noble rebellion_.  
  
Bodies of Unbroken soldiers litter the earth around them, twisted and burnt and dead, and the gaping hole in the grand gate of sticks and rusted metal that Elia and her men had erected is smoking, thick black plumes of oily smog. The Fatebinder had blasted through the thing with a great gout of violet lightning that had blinded almost everyone on the field. Even Barik had taken a moment to recover, disoriented, while the Fatebinder marched onward, her stupidly dramatic robes whipping in the wind behind her. Verse had followed swiftly—where the Fatebinder goes, good killing does, too.  
  
She hadn’t been disappointed.  
  
Now there’s a circle of glowering soldiers loyal to the Binder surrounding Elia, who is knelt on the grimy ground, clutching one filthy hand to the weeping wound in her side. That had been the Fatebinder’s doing—a single ruthless thrust from that bladed staff had dug deep into the tender gap where the pieces of the breastplate join, puncturing lung, scrambling muscle. Elia doesn’t have very long, and every person watching her knows it. Verse hopes she chokes on her own windpipe as recompense for making them all listen to the grating idiocy of her voice.  
  
“Sit down, Commander,” the Fatebinder says, her face so still and expressionless that Verse could have mistaken her for a statue. Her hair is pulled back today, in a sleek, businesslike knot at the back of her head, exposing her high cheekbones and large eyes. Verse is reminded of an owl, with a twisting neck and a glassy stare.  
  
“ _Fuck you,_ ” Elia spits. A gob of blood and dirt escapes the corner of her chapped mouth.  
  
Just one of the Fatebinder’s brows twitches, imperceptibly, her muted equivalent of disgust. “No, thank you,” she says primly, and then, in a savage riposte, drives the butt of her staff into Elia’s forehead. The impact sends Elia on her ass, and the Commander wheezes, surprise and agony melding in a single rattling breath. “Really, I must insist. Make yourself comfortable.”  
  
Another wheeze. Elia bares bloodstained teeth. “You _crazy bitch!_ ”  
  
“Tell me what you know about the relic,” the Fatebinder continues, totally calm. “Or about the illustrious leader of the Unbroken, if this horde of drooling morons has one. I don’t have a marked preference.”  
  
“Just kill me and be done with it,” Elia hisses, glaring up at the Fatebinder with reddened eyes, jabbing the index of her unoccupied hand at the standing woman. “We both know I won’t bend to torture. You’d only be wasting your time.”  
  
Verse has a perfect view of the Fatebinder’s jaw tightening, like the coil of a steel trap. She knows what comes after _that_ look.  
  
Charis kneels, eye-level with the Commander, and the Southerner idiot is either too shocked or frightened to move, because she doesn’t budge. In the next moment the Fatebinder has grasped at Elia’s hand with her own; there is no magic this time, just pure cruel force, the strength of the Fatebinder’s agile hands breaking Elia’s fingers to pieces.  
  
The Commander howls like a dying animal, the strident screech of it rising above even the wind. Several of the soldiers look like they’re about to be ill. Cowards.  
  
“Are you _sure_ about that?” the Fatebinder says, stony and placid.  
  
“Oh, _fuck,”_ Elia whimpers. Charis allows her to retreat, to cradle the ruined tangle of joints to her chest. Her speech wavers with tears and suffering and hatred. “You Northern _shits_ are all the same. Does stepping on the neck of the fallen make you feel justified? Is this how you get off in war?”  
  
“Yeah,” Verse drawls, unable to help herself. “More or less.”  
  
Barik is righteous rage and ramrod haughtiness in place of Verse’s indifference, her distant impatience. He draws himself up further, his awful armor clamoring. “I wouldn’t call it a requirement, you filthy Southern mutt, but it helps.”  
  
And there’s that charming Disfavored fixation with pedigree again—Verse can’t find it in herself to give a shit about blood unless it’s the kind that’s getting spilled, preferably by her.  
  
The soft cadence of the Fatebinder’s voice stops anyone else from talking further. “Please, be as loquacious as you were when we first met by the gate,” she says gently. Verse remembers, and remembers well— _it’s not a suggestion._ “Detail is most important.”  
  
Elia glares at them, but there’s no fire in it, in her paling face. Fear and blood loss are such a wonderful combination, in Verse’s experience. “Fine… fine! I’ve suffered enough for my country. I deserve a moment’s respite before my eternal fucking slumber.”  
  
Ironclad morals, this one. Truly.  
  
So she tells them all she knows, about Mattias and the Insignia, the Oldwall breach and the idiots who went inside. Verse eventually gets her wish—Elia ends up gasping for breath as the Fatebinder wrings the life from her with a vise of force magic. She flails like a fish, admirably flexible for one so wounded, and dies with a pathetic gurgle. The silence afterward is divine.  
  
“What a headache,” the Fatebinder says, peering down at the now-corpse in faint reproach.  
  
Barik clears his throat, glancing at Charis. “It is done, then.”  
  
Charis looks at him as though she’s just encountered a talking latrine. Barik shrinks back, just an inch. “Yes. Yes, it is. Now that this is _sorted_ … make your report to General Ashe when you believe I’m not looking. I am going to investigate the breach.”  
  
She turns on her heel, leaving them all behind, copper dust billowing in her wake. Verse and Lantry are the first to recover; Barik gives chase moments later, clanking up enough noise for an entire armory. Verse _knows_ he’s stewing inside that iron shell of his. The Fatebinder’s open—but always technically polite—contempt for the Disfavored chafes at him, bites at his stupid, overblown pride. Her ‘betrayal’ of their forces at the Spire destroyed Barik’s personal regard for the Fatebinder. He’s all professionalism now, stiff and unfriendly. It amuses Verse like nothing else. The Fatebinder may be a cold fish, a storm under dead skin, but she despises idiocy and incompetence in all its forms, no matter the color of its banner. Verse finds it easy to work with her for almost only that reason alone: they agree on a startling amount, despite the Fatebinder’s _professional_ connections with the Court. If she didn’t leash herself to Tunon the way she does, Verse wonders, would she kill every Archon in her way and be done with it, win this war herself?  
  
The Fatebinder’s back offers no answers to that question.  
  
She supposes she’ll have to wait and see.


End file.
